Anyone know of a CECB that can be controlled via a serial connection of some sort... preferably with passthrough and S-Video out as well.

I am hoping to use 2 of them to feed my mythtv server's tuner cards. I realize I could just get more HD tuners, but I intend to leave my SD tuner cards connected to cable anyway and I thought it might be nice to get my broadcast channels in crystal clear downscaled HD rather than noisy cable when my HD tuners are in use.

Anyway, I have no interest in dealing with ir blasters... they too flaky.

This box has a serial port "for factory use only". If you connect a PC at 115200N81 you get a ZMon> prompt. Using the zir command, you can simulate the pressing of any button on the remote control.

Look in the Tivax STB-T9 EPG thread, starting around message #90.

You will need to hack your TiVo (get a shell prompt and all that) and figure out a way to get the tivo software to call a script when it needs to change channels or otherwise get control of which commands it sends (there may be a data file you can modify) or insert a programmable gadget between the two serial ports.